Shubh Prabhat: Nutritional support for children with wholesome 1st Morning Meal

Project Background: 

Breakfast is often called the most important meal of the day, and for good reason. Missing breakfast has been associated with poor diets, higher body mass index, and adverse effects on children's behavior and academic performance. Many underserved families survive on just one meal a day, and it is the children who are affected the most when they are forced to skip breakfast. This is evident from their poor attention span, inability to grasp what is being taught and poor test scores in school. It also leads to low body weight vs age indices. In the long run, this leads to lower income prospects, poor health, with quality of life severely compromised. 

Current need: 

Although children receive mid-day meals in schools, it is often served after a 2 hour interval of attending school. Due to hunger and low energy levels, children often end up eating unhealthy packaged snacks readily available in shops surrounding school. Whis can be prevented with healthy intake of a breakfast meal. 

Breakfast becomes a source to get the nutrients necessary for taking on everyday tasks. Access to healthy breakfast allows children to concentrate more on their tasks, be more open to learning, and even good behavioral indicators due to improved levels of energy to play, run, exercise, and do everything else the day demands.

Our intervention: 

UW India's project Shubh Prabhat focuses on ensuring breakfast for better mornings, & is being implemented in selected municipal schools in Mumbai by providing hot and nutritious breakfast to underprivileged children. Millets are our traditional and indigenous grains and are known for their superior nutritive qualities. This is among the many reasons why 2023 has been declared as the International Year of Millets. 

Children will receive a traditional Indian breakfast made of healthy millets such as Ragi, Sorghum and Pearl millet. Through this program, UW India  is spearheading a movement to promote going back to our roots in our eating practices, and also educating parents on the upsides of consuming various millets - a low-cost and nutritional superfood. 

300 students to be provided with nutritious morning meals for a period of one year